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Hi!  Does anyone have any suggestions for something that is authentic, yet not tooooo difficult/time consuming?  Of course there is Rick Bayless and Diana Kennedy, but even with just their books, I don't know which to choose...

Thanks!

The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz has just been indexed by member robm.  He also gave the book good reviews in Notes (several!) so hopefully he will add his comments here as well.

Thanks to Jane for sharing info about that book.  I'll have to take a look as I wasn't aware of it!

I think Mexican Everyday by Rick Bayless would be a great first book. The recipes aren't overly complicated and some are very simple but the results are consistently good. This book has a number of photos as well which I find helpful so you know what you're aiming for when making a dish for the first time.

There aren't a lot of Mexican restaurants in Toronto and I don't have a deep enough knowledge of the cuisine to say I really feel like "insert name of Mexican dish here". I may crave Mexican food and the only way I can decide on a dish is by searching by ingredient in EYB or, by pulling the book off shelf and flipping through it to see what appeals. I find this to be much easier when book has pictures.

I don't have all Diana Kennedy's books but there are no photos in the ones I do have so it takes me a lot longer to flip through to decide what to make.

Have you had a look at Mexican Food Made Simple by Thomasina Miers? It is already indexed here on EYB. Miers is a British chef who owns a chain of Mexican restaurants in London called Wahaca, which are very nice and not overly fancy. Her show based on the book is currently being broadcast on British television and is very enjoyable to watch, and the dishes she makes look pretty straightforward.

Thanks so much for the recommendations!  I will definitely check out these books!  :-)

You can see my notes on "The New Complete Book of Mexican Cooking" by Elisabeth Lambert Ortiz, but I can highly recommend it for cooks getting familiar with Mexican cuisine.  Ortiz was way ahead of the curve, publishing the original edition of this book back in the 60s (as I recall).  She's very conscientious and authentic, but a lot less rigid and bossy than Diana Kennedy (who is unquestionably one of the great authorities on Mexican food). Ortiz's recipes tend to be less complicated than Kennedy's and she suggests good, practical substitutes for harder-to-find Mexican ingredients that don't adversely affect the taste of the dish!  Fortunately, Ortiz does tell you about the original ingredients, so if you can find them in your community you can use them.  She also doesn't have a heart attack if you use a short cut, like a food processor or blender instead of a volcanic stone mortar and pestle!

I grew up in Mexico City in the 50s -- it was a beautiful city then, with only about 3 million people, so it wasn't the smoggy megalopolis it's turned into in recent years!  Although we're Americans we ate Mexican food at home and at restaurants, and those years in Mexico have influenced my family's eating habits ever since.  Ortiz's recipes produce the kind of food I remember from growing up.  While she offers recipes from all regions of Mexico, most of them seem to come from central Mexico.  This book won't produce much Tex-Mex food (similar to northern Mexican cooking) which is what most North Americans are familiar with.  For that there are a number of good books available by authors like Jim Peyton, or "The Border Cookbook" by Bill and Cheryl Jamison.  There are also a number of fine books on Southwestern cuisine from New Mexico.

I also suggest you look for books written by Mexican authors (published in English).  There are great, authentic cookbooks by Zarela Martinez, Patricia Quintana or Roberto Santibañez.  Mexico is a large country and Mexican cuisine varies by region.  You can find good books in English on Veracruz cuisine (the Gulf Coast), northern Mexican cooking, Yucatán cuisine (influenced by the Mayas) and Oaxaca cooking (one of the greatest and most varied regional cuisines).  The "Mexico The Beautiful" cookbook is also very good.  

Enjoy your adventures in Mexican cooking!  It's one of the great cuisines of the world, and you'll be amazed by the variety and richness of Mexican cooking if all you're familiar with is Americanized Tex-Mex!

P.S.  The several notes I wrote on "New Complete" are because there's no feature to edit reviews once you've posted them.  You can only add comments!  Maybe that's something that could be fixed in a future version of EYB!

Your wish is our command, robm!  There is a new release of the website going live tonight that has that very feature.

Cool!  

Something to remember about authentic Mexican cuisine is that it's largely peasant-based, using ingredients that are readily available in Mexico.  An awful lot of Mexican cooking is about the myriad sauces, which are used to vary a diet in which the main ingredients often show up every day.  You can use most of the sauces equally well on pork, chicken or beef, to make enchiladas or casseroles, etc.  The technique of enchiladas in mole and enchiladas in green sauce is very similar, but the taste certainly isn't!

Mexican recipes can look challenging because many use lots of ingredients.  Originally, this was pretty labor-intensive cooking.  Poor women usually had kids or extended family members who helped in the laborious effort; middle and upper-class women had cooks who did all the work!  Fortunately for Mexican cooks everywhere we now have blenders and food processors available that make preparing traditional sauces a snap!  So don't be intimidated by recipes with many ingredients -- modern appliances make them much easier!  Pretty much all of the cooked sauces freeze well, too, so make a lot and freeze some for future use.  Like many complex sauces, most of them improve after being refrigerated or frozen so the flavors really meld together.  That means you can make most of these sauces ahead of time and they'll be even better than if you make them "just in time."  

There are many convenience products available (especially in Mexican markets) than can shorten cooking times. There are excellent ground chiles or chile pastes, for example, that will save you having to grind your own.  Very good prepared moles, pipianes and adobos are available off-the-shelf that just need some "doctoring" at home to make them perfectly delicious!  Many recipes call for ground nuts or seeds for flavor and thickening, but you can use readily available nut flours, nut butters and tahini instead, to equally good effect. Tomato-flavored chicken broth is used in many Mexican dishes, and Knorr and Maggi have it in instant form.  The Knorr Mexican shrimp broth (in powder or cubes) is spicy and makes a great base for many fish/seafood dishes.  As well as Mexican cooking, I use it to make Creole jambalaya!  It would probably be a good ingredient in a bouillabaise or cioppino, too!  Once you become familiar with the Mexican food aisles you'll probably think of numerous uses for some of the ingredients!  Almost all ingredients you can't find locally are now available online, so don't let a lack of Mexican ingredients in your area stop you!  (If you can't find Mexican chorizo in your area, it's very easy to make at home with a food processor -- another item you can make in quantity and freeze in individual-use portions for future use.)  

Finally, feel free to improvise once you've found a recipe you like.  Mexican cooks do all the time!  There aren't too many hard and fast rules.  Obviously, Puebla-style mole must include dark chiles and unsweetened chocolate, but you can play around with the many spices and thickeners. No two cooks in Mexico make it identically!  Pipián means a sauce is based on green pumpkin seeds or nuts, but, again, you can vary the seasonings to your taste. And so on!  Mexican cooks pride themselves on their creativity in improving traditional recipes, and so should you!

Consider Marilyn Tausend who wrote a Williams Sonoma book and also a Julia Child Award winner entitled Cocina De La Familiia.

If I were to chose one book I'd go with that wonderful new coffee table book that won so many award this year by Diana Kennedy entitled: 

"Oaxaca al Gusto" is just fascinating, but not an easy book to cook from!  Besides its heavy, coffee-table size, which isn't very practical in a kitchen, it's TOTALLY authentic.  That means many recipes include ingredients unavailable outside of Oaxaca, like specific chiles, ant eggs, and other exotic items!  Kennedy is probably the greatest authority alive on Mexican cuisine (her books have even been translated into Spanish for publication in Mexico) but she basically takes the attitude that if you don't use the exact ingredients and techniques in one of her recipes you shouldn't bother to try it!  (Marcella Hazan is another great cookbook writer with this annoying tendency!)  Of course, you can ignore her and plow ahead, but good luck with the ant eggs!  :-)

Zarela Martinez's book on Oaxaca cuisine is excellent and a more practical guide for cooks outside Oaxaca.  It's listed in the EYB Library and you can buy it through EYB if you don't have it.  Whichever book you use, you'll be exposed to one of the richest, most varied regional cuisines in the world.  If you can master the Seven Moles, you'll be the best Mexican cook around!